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The Old, the High, and the Cyclists

As we are sitting on the floor with the owner of our guest house stuffing and folding momos for dinner, we ease drop on the conversations up above on the patio through the vent. The intoxicated travelers above are talking loudly over the music they are blaring. These are the same people who came back at five am. this morning so drunk and high off of whatever drug they had managed to get ahold of that everyone, including the owners, poked their heads outside to check out the commotion.

While we go to bed by nine or so every night, many travelers have just barely begun their night at that point, highlighting a key difference between us and them. Being in a very touristic town this last week has demonstrated to me just how different some people’s reason for travel is compared to ours. While we are here primarily to see the culture and mountains, it seems that a majority of travelers, especially among the younger crowd, are simply here to “have a good time.”

Of course, each to their own, but this does make it difficult for Kevin and I to make friends because we have absolutely nothing in common with so many of the people we encounter in these tourist hubs. They can’t understand why we don’t spend the day smoking and the night on drugs, while we can’t understand why they flew all the way here if that is all they want to do. It has now become a standing joke between us that we can’t seem to make friends (besides other cyclists, cyclists all seem to travel for the same reasons) who aren’t two or three times our age because those are the only people we can relate to. Sometimes as we walk around town we point out the people, usually in their fifties or sixties, who we bet we would get along with splendidly. It’s a good thing age doesn’t seem to matter when you are on the road.